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The Swelle Life
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A Paris-loving fashion destination with a focus on emerging designers as well as the Big Guns, including reviews from the front-row, art and design and everything in between, with a touch of humour - after all, fashion should be fun!
Recent Posts Tagged With 'art and artists'
WhiteFly Casts the Past in Precious Metals
WhiteFly takes delicate and beautiful things like vintage lace and satin ribbon bows and flowers and casts them in solid gold or sterling silver to make gorgeous one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry. The Los Angeles jewelry maker cuts and finishes each pi...
The Arousing Style of Dita Von Teese
You would think that an international burlesque performer who is famous for taking her clothes off in an elaborately choreographed and propped stage show would be best known for her body. But it’s Dita Von Teese’s throwback starlet style tha...
Orla Kiely\'s Dreamy Retro Autumn Dressing
Sorry to be AWOL, we moved Wednesday and didn't have a connection until today. Thank you all for checking in, sorry for no fresh posts! I suffered a bit of withdrawal yesterday! I first heard of Orla Kiely at the Tate Modern gift shop in London about...
Orla Kiely\'s Dreamy Retro Autumn Dressing
Sorry to be AWOL, we moved Wednesday and didn't have a connection until today. Thank you all for checking in, sorry for no fresh posts! I suffered a bit of withdrawal yesterday! I first heard of Orla Kiely at the Tate Modern gift shop in London ...
Alexander McQueen's Paris Show Live Streaming Tonight!
Update! If you can't get on the site, don't worry. Showstudio is getting high volume and is trying to sort it out. The good news is there's word from Paris that the show won't start for a bit, I'd check......
Alexander McQueen\'s Paris Show Live Streaming Tonight!
Update! If you can't get on the site, don't worry. Showstudio is getting high volume and is trying to sort it out. The good news is there's word from Paris that the show won't start for a bit, I'd check in again at 9 pm Pa...
How to Expand Your Wardrobe With One Swift Move
I'm sorry if that headline got you all excited and you thought I'd tell you how to make dresses magically appear in your closet. If I knew that, Net-a-porter would be filing a chapter 11 and the DHL driver would......
Oh Boy, How I Love Trompe L\'Oeil
Things aren't always as they seem and that's what makes trompe l'oeil - good trompe l'oeil - so cool. There are a lot of examples around that are really just decoration and aren't tricking the eye at all. All of these here appear to be real at fir...
Frankenfashion
No, Frankenfashion is not the lengthy worst dressed list from the Emmys. It's a new film by Alex Turvey that was commissioned by Dazed and Confused and featured as part of onedotzero and Dazed's Fashion in Film program at the BFI. Why didn't they...
Fashion's Future Looks Bright and Shiny: Academy of Art University Show
Seven MFA candidates from San Francisco’s Academy of Art University were chosen to show their collections at NY fashion week. And dare I say, that while I've immensely enjoyed the collections from NY to the extreme this season, it's refreshing......
Connections II: English Ecclectic Meets Japanese Aesthetic
Connections II is a studio exhibition presenting exquisite textile design from England and Japan and it features my most favourite textile artist, renowned feltmaker Liz Clay. She will be joined at her studio by English knitwear designer Annie Fewlas...
You Can Have Your Cake Vault and Eat it Never
That headline probably makes no sense but its going to have to do. I'm having full body coughing fits for no apparent reason so I'm going to go bed early but wanted to show you this awesome art installation before......
Let Yourself Feel
let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo. Today while browsing the beautiful blog Brocante I saw the most dreamy animation project from motion graphics designer Estaban Diácono, inspired by the song Ljósið by Olafur Arnalds. The bursts of...
Gareth Pugh's Colourful Fantasy 'Frieze'
Click the image to watch Nick Knight doesn't waste anything. The latest Showstudio collaboration between Nick Knight and Gareth Pugh, Frieze, draws on archive video recorded on the set of Nick Knight's shoot for the October 2006 issue of i-D.The......
Summer Re-run: Francoise Hardy: Style as Inspiring as Her Music
It's time to leave my family and friends in Canada and fly back to England, so I'm posting another article from when The Swelle Life was a baby, about my favourite style icon, Francoise Hardy. Let's go back about 40......
Watch a Chanel Haute Couture Garment Being Made
There is nothing more exhilarating in fashion than laying your eyes on an exquisite, artisan crafted haute couture garment of spectacular beauty. I'm endlessly fascinated by the techniques employed by the plumassiers at Lemarie and the embroiderers a...
Summer Re-run: Old Men Dress Cool and That Includes David Hockney
Originally published June 2008 Britain's greatest living artist, David Hockney (you heard me, Damien Hirst), made 10 magazine's Old Men Dress Cool list of stylin' well-aged gents. Cited alongside David Lynch and George Clooney, Hockney is a far less ...
The Hoff Drunk on the Floor is High Art
When The Hoff hit rockbottom and was filmed drunk and shirtless on the floor shoving a hamburger in his face by his teenage daughter to teach him a lesson, the footage hit YouTube and joined the crap collective of pop......
Midcentury Postmodern
The perfect follow-up to yesterday's awesome photo of Kristin from Mette as a Mad Men character is this 'blast from the past' artwork from Jim Ward Morris. The Bellingham, Washington artist has created two series of works called Midcentury and......
Wanna Buy Coco Rocha's Miniature Greenhouse?
Victorian miniature greenhouse by Simon Costin. £6,000. Model Coco Rocha. Albion Cosmetics A/W 2009 campaign. Photographed by Tim Walker. Have you ever wondered what happens to those cool and unusual props made for editorial shoots and campaigns? We...
A Decorated House is a Happy House
Tonight I found another artist who loves Paris as much as I do (I'm referring to Fifi Flowers as the first, and I have a hunch there may even be more!). Donna Courtney of The Decorated House creates collages that......
La Joie de Vivre, Fifi Flowers-style
Parisienne Party Dress. Fifi Flowers Just about everybody who has been to Paris has fallen in love with it. And the rest are likely just as smitten with the notion that lives within their imagination thanks to photographs and paintings......
Jena Ardell's Dreamy Summers 'Past'
Diver by Jena Ardell Hazy, washed out photographs that appear like a faded memory make me nostalgic for my childhood, even if the subject matter doesn't quite fit my own experience. Like this candy-coloured attraction-filled pier below that has me......
What I Saw On a Stroll One Night in Paris
I wanted to call this post simply One Night in Paris but someone ruined that for me. These photos are what we saw along the way when we walked from our flat in the Latin Quarter down to Rue Mouffetard......
And the Award for Most Awesome Dollhouse Goes to...
Check this shit out! (I've always wanted to start a post that way. Now it's done.) More of a miniature home than a dollhouse, this painstakingly detailed model took Peter Riches 15 years to complete. The 64 year-old retired builder......
LAINE: A Collection of Rare Gems
There's a quote that goes "The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart", and a variation of these words came to mind when I first saw the new collection from artisan jeweller Courtney Laine.......
Dior Gets an In-House Artist
Wendy Tabac, author of the book Chic in Paris and her blog of the same name, recently had Bil Donovan, Dior Beauty's first Artist-in-Residence, interviewed for the site by French fashion journalist Charlotte Wiedemann. Donovan talks about his love fo...
